The Most Important Election in History is Behind Us — Why 2000 Was the Most Disastrous Ever

And we lost.

Photo from Wikipedia

Some say that 2016 was the most important election in history. Some say 2020 was or that 2024 will be. My contention is that the most important election was in 2000.

Because the climate crisis is an existential crisis for human civilization, and because we’ve done nothing about it — CO2 emissions continue to increase — then we missed our opportunity for more than 20 years of actual progress by installing the oil president (Bush) instead of the people’s choice (Gore), the climate president, back in 2020.

Whatever you think of the decisions, particularly the Supreme Court ruling that put George W. Bush into the Oval Office, the consequences are clear.

Let me be blunt — my political leanings are way to the left of Al Gore’s, BUT Gore was seriously committed to fighting the climate catastrophe (which is what it is today) and would have certainly done everything in his power to move us away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

He was ridiculed for this. But the joke is on us. And on our children and grandchildren. The joke is no longer funny, if it ever was.

Pretty much every president since Carter (with the obvious exception of Trump) made SOME noises about doing something about the climate crisis. This includes President’s Reagan and George W. Bush. But none did anything significant. There is no doubt that Al Gore was different. He was obsessed (and remains obsessed) with the climate crisis. He pursued it when it was politically unpopular. He kept at it when he was ridiculed.

Today, as we are subjected to ever more sever storms, wildfires and floods, Gore is STILL ridiculed.

And yet he won the popular vote by more than a million votes. He WAS the people’s choice. But, whether legitimately or through some questionable plot, he was denied the presidency and we lost the best chance to save our children and grandchildren from immense unnecessary suffering.

Current and future elections won’t have any effect on the climate catastrophe. Corporate power over the government — nearly every politician owes his/her office to wealthy donors — is at its all-time high. Change will only come, if it comes at all, when people refuse to go along, defy the corporations and the wealthy oil pushers. We need a movement of mass protest and sabotage to make fossil fuels untenable, make them a risky investment. We need to get money to flee fossil fuels for renewable energy. We are almost out of time. It’s up to US.

Please read these two books: The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson and How to Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm. You can make a difference. Really.